Maddie

It's a very ambiguous term from the past.

You don't really hear yourself do you?

Ok * In that case I have some beautiful property for you. I promise I own it, I promise its nice, and I promise the price will be fair, just don't ask for any evidence of this ok? :-)

I tried reading an English translation and got turned off pretty quickly.

It did seem quite effective as he was demonstrating them against trained MMA grapplers though.

Maybe its more accurate to say that muscle knots are not qi stagnation, but are caused by qi stagnation.

Here's one lol. Crazy I know right? Wanting to know if someone says something that its true! Nuts! lol

I have a question about Daoism myself. Does Daoism have anything like mindfulness in Buddhism where one just observes the mind without getting involved?

I agree and have the same concern about not being a deluded narcissist. I think one good way to know if we are good at what we think we are good at is from feedback from a large sample size of people. I think you write well, I also think you listen well. I imagine that you get told this often by other people too. Therefore you can feel reasonably confident that your feeling about your writing and listening skills are accurate. I think I'm a good acupuncturist. My patients tell me I'm a good acupuncturist. So I tend to think I am a good acupuncturist and am not deluding myself. Also I don't think I sing well. Sometimes I live stream and sing and people tend to disappear when I do this. This supports my notion that I should not get into a singing career anytime soon lol.

I'm not really artistic but I have noticed that when I do simple breath meditation (samatha) that an unwanted side effect is that I get super creative. Typically this is something that I try to ignore, but I was thinking in your case it might be what you're looking for.

I'd heard that Tai Chi was primarily a grappling art recently from an MMA coach that was looking into it.

You're not wrong there. In regards to ego causing some people to like Trump while you dislike him. Ego (therefore delusion) is what leads to desire and aversion. Some like him because of ego, and others dislike him because of ego.

I also think Trump is an ass-hat and get upset, but then again I've not transcended ego either lol. You get upset with Trump because YOU think he's doing something wrong, and YOU think it should not be that way. This is where ego comes in. Were it not for ego you would see what Trump was doing and realize it wasn't skillful, but you would not be upset, and so would I.

It's important to remember that the Buddha taught about letting go, but also taught a great deal about compassion.

According to the Buddha giving too much of an ef is the source of our suffering. * society is part of samsara, the Buddha was about liberation from samsara.

According to the Buddha it comes from the ego or the false sense of self. You probably don't care if someone disagrees with Joe Schmo in Kalamazoo, You probably do care if someone disagrees with you. What's the difference? You are not Joe Schmo, there is no sense of self there, therefore you don't get upset.

And where does that come from? Also if there's irritation is it just about facts or is it about the facts that "I" said matter?

You can ask yourself the question where does this irritation come from?

Ideally compassion should come before ego 😌🩷

Practice is to make the theory more a part of life LOL.

OMG that is how it goes with an acupuncture clinic. I'll have 50 people tell me that I changed their life for the better and then one person is like "eh it didn't do anything" after ignoring the treatment plan and then I just want to go off and cry even though 50 people told me that they love me lol.

This is such an interesting perspective to consider and I'm sorry this happens to you. I guess I have never felt this from this forum. I suppose its one reason I wanted to discuss our experiences on this forum itself. This too can be an interesting study and topic of discussion. *btw don't feel inferior Luke, you're one of my favorite people on here! :-) <3

Very much agreed. Personally if its possible at all I think understanding exactly what the Buddha said is probably a very difficult task as every school has their own texts and own spin on things. I think some people think Theravada Buddhism equals original Buddhism, but I don't think so. This is why I try to piece it together from the Pali texts, but I must keep in mind that those don't necessarily reflect all the words of the Buddha accurately either.

I guess the main branch of Buddhism that I have studied was Theravada but I don't consider myself to be any particular school. I think I eventually realized that Qigong wasn't going to answer the big questions. When it comes to Buddhism these days I'm more interested in exploring both modern interpretations while simultaneously looking at the original texts and avoiding most modern Western understandings.